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McCarthy hasn’t looked great against this less than stellar competition. He would have to make some big strides to go #1, IMO.
He's also been on a team that had their HC and OC suspended the first 3 games and Michigan played Rutgers a certain way. Slow and methodical. There's a reason that game was one of the fastest played games in recent Michigan history. They wanted to limit possessions and keep the clock rolling. McCarthy is the real deal.
I like Penex too. He's got crazy potential, tons of experience and a big arm. I'd draft either over the smurf from USC
F#*K OHIO!!!
You're not only an amazingly beautiful man, but you're the greatest football mind to ever exist. <-- Jeffy Shittypants actually posted this. I knew he was in love with me.
By Nick Kosmider and The Athletic Staff
Sep. 24, 2023
The Miami Dolphins’ explosive offense made easy work of the Denver Broncos, winning 70-20 and improving to 3-0 Sunday at Hard Rock Stadium. Here’s what you need to know:
*- The Dolphins scored 10 touchdowns, with five scores coming from running backs De’Von Achane and Raheem Mostert.
*- Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa went 23-of-26 for 309 yards, with four touchdowns and no interceptions.
*- The Dolphins’ total was the highest since 1966 when the Washington Redskins scored 72 against the New York Giants.
*- The Broncos fell to 0-3 with Sunday’s loss behind QB Russell Wilson going 23-of-28 for 306 yards, one touchdown and one interception. Wide receiver Courtland Sutton scored a first-quarter touchdown but had two costly fumbles.
The Athletic’s instant analysis:
Dolphins offense puts on a show
Coach Mike McDaniel was asked this week what it would be like to prepare for the possibility of playing without Jaylen Waddle for the first time since the explosive wide receiver entered the league in 2021. The short version of his long answer: Miami had plenty of other players who could fill in and the coaching staff would do its best to put those players in a position to succeed.
The Dolphins did that and then some, eclipsing a franchise record in scoring while thriving with every aspect of their offensive attack. Tagovailoa did not throw an incomplete pass until the third quarter, more than two hours after the game began. He threw a 54-yard touchdown pass to Tyreek Hill on the third play of the game and Miami was only getting started. Mostert and Achane combined to rush for more than 200 yards by the end of the third quarter and Miami didn’t even face a third down until the second quarter. In short, they looked like the most explosive team in the NFL. — Kosmider
Achane next star for Miami’s offense?
Throughout training camp, the Dolphins saw signs that Achane, the third-round pick out of Texas A&M, could add another explosive element to an offense that wanted to be better on the ground in 2023. Achane kept climbing the depth chart and was active for the first time in Week 2 against the Patriots. He had two touches for nine yards in that contest, but it was clear he was moving toward a larger role.
Achane broke out in a big way Sunday, rushing for 128 yards and a touchdown and catching four passes for 30 yards and two more scores. Mostert still looks the part of a more-than-capable lead back for Miami. He rushed for 82 yards and found the end zone three times Sunday. But Achane’s total package — size, speed, pass-game explosiveness — means he may just be getting started. — Kosmider
What happened to the Broncos?
Make no mistake, Vance Joseph is feeling the heat. The Broncos defensive coordinator, who returned this offseason four years after being fired as the team’s head coach, was on the wrong end of a record day for the Dolphins. The Dolphins toyed with Denver’s defense at every turn. Joseph had no answers.
It certainly didn’t help that Denver was without star safety Justin Simmons. His replacement, Delarrin Turner-Yell, was out of position on the third play of the game when Tagovailoa hit Hill for a deep touchdown. But one player would not have changed things for the Broncos on Sunday.
Denver has surrendered 88 points across the last seven quarters. Broncos coach Sean Payton wanted Vic Fangio to be his defensive coordinator when he took the job. But Fangio, fired by Denver as coach after the 2021 season, is now with the Dolphins. After the debacle in Miami on Sunday, it won’t be a shock if Payton is conducting a new search sooner than later. — Kosmider
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Move over, Christmas Day Massacre. The Denver Broncos have flopped another flop onto the fire.
When the Broncos lost a game to the Los Angeles Rams by a score of 51-14 nine months ago, the national television embarrassment sparked swift and substantive change. The Broncos fired Nathaniel Hackett 15 games into his first season as head coach. Offensive line coach Butch Barry was swept out the door, too. So was special teams coordinator Dwayne Stukes.
Co-owner and CEO Greg Penner, vowing not to put the organization’s fans through another Sunday like the one at SoFi Stadium, set out on a search that landed on Sean Payton. He hired an experienced and proven winner who, Penner believed, would orchestrate a seismic cultural shift and prevent anything resembling the Christmas meltdown from happening again.
Perhaps the turnaround will come in due time. But it took Payton only three games to experience the kind of embarrassment that carved a new low mark for the Broncos during their seven-year slog into the depths of the NFL.
Dolphins 70, Broncos 20.
“I’m at a loss for words,” Payton said Sunday.
The Broncos on Sunday were on the wrong end of one of the most prolific days of offense in NFL history. The Broncos gave up 726 yards to the Dolphins on Sunday, the second-most surrendered by a team since the merger in 1970. The Broncos were an equal-opportunity sieve, allowing five touchdowns via pass and five by the rush. Two different running backs — Raheem Mostert and De’Von Achane — scored four touchdowns apiece, another NFL first.
Defensive coordinator Vance Joseph is well-respected around the league. He has experience in various schemes and had familiarity with a handful of players on Denver’s roster dating back to his tenure as the team’s head coach during the 2017 and 2018 seasons. And he’s certainly not been helped by a rash of injuries to his secondary, which was exploited at every turn by the Dolphins from the game’s opening moments.
But the bottom line for Denver’s defense this season is brutal and could warrant a change. In their last seven quarters, the Broncos have surrendered 102 points. They didn’t give up that many points until the seventh game of the 2022 season. And the margin of defeat for the Broncos on Sunday was the second-worst in franchise history.
It was somehow all worse than even the ever-increasing numbers on Miami’s side of the scoreboard suggested. One screenshot taken from behind a play that ended in one of Miami’s 10 touchdown runs told the story. It showed a line of Broncos players on their backs and stomachs after attempts to tackle Achane that were all varying degrees of futile. This is an undisciplined unit that leads the NFL in penalties, shoots into the wrong gaps too frequently and misses tackles at an alarming rate.
“Defensively, that’s not who we are and we know that,” said Pat Surtain II, the All-Pro corner who showed he wasn’t immune to misery Sunday when he was burned by wide receiver Robbie Chosen on a 68-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter.
But the Broncos have been trending toward a performance like this on the defensive side of the ball for a while, and that goes deeper than Joseph. The Broncos traded Bradley Chubb to the Dolphins last November, deciding they didn’t want to hand a $100-plus-million contract to a pass rusher who had been frequently shelved by injuries since joining the NFL as a first-round pick in 2018. That’s all well and good, but Denver watched its pass rush, the lifeblood of any harassing defense, crater in the second half of the season. Moves to address the issue came only around the margins in the offseason, so is it any surprise only the Chicago Bears have produced a worse pass rush than the Broncos this season in terms of pressure rate?
The Broncos barely breathed on Tua Tagovailoa on Sunday, let alone move him off his spots. He completed his first 17 passes. The Dolphins didn’t even face a third down until the second quarter.
“Seventy (points) doesn’t happen by one or two mistakes,” linebacker Alex Singleton said. “I think it’s going to be all over the tape. You got to eat it. You got to take it for what it is. We got to learn, learn fast and move on.”
This wasn’t simply about the defense for Denver, as historically bad as its performance was Sunday. This was about a team not fully recognizing where it is in its wandering search for the path back to relevancy. Payton on the eve of training camp said he would be “disappointed” if the Broncos were not a playoff team. After all, the Broncos had shelled out big cash in free agency to retool their offensive line. They brought in players who they believed could add an element of toughness that was missing for the Broncos as they dropped one close game after another in 2022.
But this clearly isn’t a quick fix, no matter how much the Broncos want it to be, and that was never more apparent than Sunday. The Dolphins operated at a different gear. The Broncos may have a better playbook offensively this season than last. The scheme is creating more open looks for quarterback Russell Wilson, and his numbers through three games have been a stark improvement over last season. But the capital surrendered to acquire him in March of 2022 and to acquire the rights to hire Payton in February have left the Broncos devoid of the picks needed to draft impact players.
The Broncos look like they hit a home run with the first pick of the Payton era. Marvin Mims Jr., the second-round pick out of Oklahoma, is already the team’s most explosive player. He returned a kickoff for a touchdown Sunday and finished with 196 all-purpose yards. But the Broncos right now are a team of flashes. The Dolphins are the whole pan. The teams aren’t in the same area code and there is no shortcut to the playoffs, a destination the Broncos appear sure to fall short of for an eighth straight season.
“I’ve been on the other side of some games like that, and every once in a while in this league you get your butt whooped, but this was more than that,” Payton said.
This isn’t New Orleans. Payton has an entirely different challenge on his hands. And based on his preseason vision for his team, the biggest obstacle of all may be managing the expectations from here.
Nick Kosmider is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Denver Broncos. He previously covered the Denver Nuggets for The Athletic after spending five years at the Denver Post, where he covered the city’s professional sports scene. His other stops include The Arizona Republic and MLB.com. Follow Nick on Twitter @NickKosmider
"I hope to see the Lions in the Super Bowl before I die"
My friend Ken L
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Raheem Mostert was all out of ideas.
Who could blame the Miami Dolphins running back after his touchdown run in the third quarter Sunday against the Denver Broncos? He and his teammates had seemingly exhausted the day’s celebration plans already. None was more joyous than the rhythmic two-step conga line virtually the entire offense created after its fifth touchdown of the day late in the second quarter, turning the grass into a ballroom.
All danced out, Mostert crossed the goal line midway through the third quarter for his third touchdown and simply handed the ball to Austin Jackson, then watched the right tackle spike it into the ground.
And to think, they were only getting started.
The Dolphins danced with NFL history Sunday during a 70-20 demolition of the Broncos. That was the score of the game, not some glitch in a video game simulation. In a masterpiece of offense execution, the Dolphins smashed the franchise record for points in a game (previously 55) and then kept going. They tallied 726 yards, the second most in NFL history. Miami tried to run out the clock late in the fourth quarter, only to keep running toward the end zone. The Dolphins are the biggest party going in the NFL, and nobody at Hard Rock Stadium on Sunday wanted to see the party end.
“Every once in a while in the NFL, you get your butt kicked,” Broncos coach Sean Payton said. “But this was something different.”
Indeed it was. Nobody had scored this many points in the league since Lyndon B. Johnson was president of the United States.
The only drama as the demolition wound down was whether the Dolphins would break the NFL record for points in a regular-season game. The record is 72, and with the Dolphins sitting on 70, facing a fourth down and in field goal range as the final seconds ticked away, the crowd chanted, “Three! More! Points!” Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel instead asked backup quarterback Mike White to drop to his knee, mercifully ending the Broncos’ nightmare.
“Chasing points and chasing a record is not what we came to do,” McDaniel said. “I’m fine getting second-guessed turning down NFL records.”
Oh, well. Kicker Jason Sanders scored 10 points without attempting a field goal.
But why talk about the points the Dolphins didn’t score when there are so many points they did score to discuss? The Dolphins threw five touchdown passes, including four from Tua Tagovailoa, who completed his first 17 passes, then enjoyed the fourth quarter from the sideline as the fireworks kept coming from Miami’s offense. The Dolphins also ran for five touchdowns, becoming the first team in NFL history to score five times by air and five times on the ground in the same game.
The Broncos had no answer for the seemingly straightforward aspects of Miami’s attack, like its relentless diet of zone runs. And Denver certainly had no solutions for the complex components, like the 4-yard, no-look touchdown pass the left-handed Tagovailoa shuffled with his right hand to De’Von Achane.
McDaniel was asked by reporters during the week what challenge he faced in potentially having to play without Jaylen Waddle for the first time since the dynamic wide receiver entered the NFL in 2021. Waddle suffered a concussion late in Miami’s Week 2 win against the New England Patriots and ultimately did not clear the league’s concussion protocol. After joking that he would just go home, McDaniel expressed confidence in the players he would have available against the Broncos and a belief the coaching staff would put them in optimal positions to thrive.
Check and check.
On their way to a historic throttling — the Broncos’ previous record for points allowed in a regular-season game was 59 — the Dolphins might have unearthed another star on an offense that already has an embarrassment of riches. Achane, the third-round pick out of Texas A&M, missed much of the preseason with a shoulder injury and was made inactive in Week 1. He played six offensive snaps in his debut in Week 2 against the Patriots, progressing further toward the kind of opportunity that opened Sunday.
In rushing for 203 yards and two touchdowns, including the 67-yard run midway through the fourth quarter that put Miami at the 70-point mark, Achane looked like the kind of weapon that could fully unlock the next level of McDaniel’s offensive scheme. He demonstrated balance. He hit holes swiftly, cut sharply and left a trail of Broncos defenders in his wake on one long run after another.
“He’s like a sponge, the way he understands the concepts,” said Mostert, who now shares a record with his rookie teammate for total touchdowns in a game after both reached the end zone four times Sunday.
And, like so many other weapons on Miami’s roster, Achane did it all with uncommon speed.
Achane finished the day with 233 total yards, and he said in the locker room that he probably had at least that many text messages already flooding his phone.
So dominant were the Dolphins during their record romp that Tyreek Hill caught nine passes for 157 yards and somehow seemed like an afterthought. His 54-yard touchdown catch on the game’s third play demonstrated the headaches the Broncos, playing without star safety Justin Simmons, would have in trying to cover anyone on Miami’s offense. In the fourth quarter, already holding a 56-13 lead, White threw deep for Robbie Chosen, who burned All-Pro cornerback Pat Surtain II for a 68-yard touchdown.
“This team is capable of great things,” Achane said.
The Dolphins might never again do anything like they did Sunday, but that doesn’t mean it was a fluke. It was the league’s most explosive offense finding another gear and introducing a star. It was McDaniel running circles around Payton. It was a quarterback at the center of it all, Tagovailoa, helping all the moving parts in Miami’s offense sprint to the end zone in concert, then leading the line dance when they got there.
“What Tua is doing,” McDaniel said, “is beyond the stat sheet.”
And this was beyond a beatdown for the Dolphins. As fans in the front row behind the end zone reveled in the Dolphins’ constant celebrations, one thing became clear: The NFL’s best party is in Miami, and it’s only getting started.
Nick Kosmider is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Denver Broncos. He previously covered the Denver Nuggets for The Athletic after spending five years at the Denver Post, where he covered the city’s professional sports scene. His other stops include The Arizona Republic and MLB.com. Follow Nick on Twitter @NickKosmider
"I hope to see the Lions in the Super Bowl before I die"
My friend Ken L
What happened to Denvers defense? They used to be top 10 NFL
They prob still are in froots rankings.
F#*K OHIO!!!
You're not only an amazingly beautiful man, but you're the greatest football mind to ever exist. <-- Jeffy Shittypants actually posted this. I knew he was in love with me.
You're not only an amazingly beautiful man, but you're the greatest football mind to ever exist. <-- Jeffy Shittypants actually posted this. I knew he was in love with me.
What happened to Denvers defense? They used to be top 10 NFL
Being an observer from afar, would assume it’s a combination of coaching and roster turnover. Vic Fangio and Ejiro Evero were in charge of the Broncos defense from 2019-2022. Two of the better DCs in the 2023 season.
Vance Joseph is the new Broncos DC. He was the Broncos HC from 2017-2018. Kinda awkward for him to be back so soon. Like imagine if Matt Patricia returned as our DC, hypothetically saying.
Oh, and the Dolphins are spooky when Tua is healthy… as we witnessed last season.
"Oh, and the Dolphins are spooky when Tua is healthy… as we witnessed last season."
What's scary is they scored 70 and Jalen Waddle didnt even play.......
Thats true
F#*K OHIO!!!
You're not only an amazingly beautiful man, but you're the greatest football mind to ever exist. <-- Jeffy Shittypants actually posted this. I knew he was in love with me.
You're not only an amazingly beautiful man, but you're the greatest football mind to ever exist. <-- Jeffy Shittypants actually posted this. I knew he was in love with me.
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